Glasgowman's Wrath (Season 16, Episode 6)
Premise: A girl is found stabbed in Inwood Hill Park after a hunt for an urban legend, her sister and their friend are missing, and a homeless man takes the blame.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 16, Episode 6
- Starring
- Sgt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Nick Amaro (Danny Pino), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino)
- Guest stars
- Will Harris as Charlie Dorsey, Chloe Csengery as Perry Gilbert, Mina Sundwall as Mia Harris, Oona Laurence as Zoe Harris, Griffin Matthews as Leslie Connolly
- Ripped from the headlines
- Loosely based on the May 2014 Slender Man stabbing in Waukesha, Wisconsin, in which two 12-year-old girls stabbed a friend 19 times in a wooded park to appease Slender Man, the internet horror character on whom Glasgowman is modeled.
- Director
- Jean de Segonzac
- Writers
- Story: Julie Martin & Warren Leight; Teleplay: Brianna Yellen & Jill Abbinanti
Summary
“Glasgowman’s Wrath” opens on the night after Halloween, as 13-year-old Perry Gilbert and her friend Mia Harris, 12, film themselves leading Mia’s frightened younger sister, Zoe, into Inwood Hill Park to hunt for a legendary figure called Glasgowman. At dawn a birdwatcher finds Zoe stabbed several times, with a head injury, and her photos show a large man crouched over the girl before he fled. Each family thought the girls were sleeping over at the other’s home, thanks to faked texts, and all three phones turn up in the apartment of Perry’s mother, Barbara. Amaro calls in Benson, home with Noah on her day off.
Zoe wakes and says the man who caught her was Glasgowman. Searchers corner Charlie Dorsey, a homeless, mentally ill man with an eye patch who once served three years for stabbing a man at a shelter, and Carisi talks him out after officers tase him. Charlie rambles about government plots but says he found the bleeding girl and helped her, and he leads Carisi to a “device” at his camp: Perry’s camera. Its footage and a hand-drawn map lead to Leslie Connolly, Perry’s male babysitter, who turned Charlie’s stories into a Glasgowman legend. The map points to a gatehouse in Spuyten Duyvil Park, where the detectives find Mia tied up, Perry bleeding from stab wounds, a knife and a dead cat.
Both girls blame Glasgowman, but Charlie was already in custody, Perry’s cuts are only an hour or two old with no defensive wounds, and only her prints are on the gatehouse knife. A knife from Charlie’s camp carries Zoe’s blood and touch DNA from Charlie, Perry and Mia. Charlie is cleared, and Carisi steers him toward a treatment program instead of prison. Mia says the plan was only to scare Zoe, but Perry hit her sister with a rock and stabbed her, then forced Mia along at knifepoint. Perry says Glasgowman demanded innocent blood, then came to her as a cat and ordered her to kill Mia, so she stabbed the cat and then herself. Because both girls are under 14, the case goes to Family Court.
Spoiler, the ending: Before Judge Ruth Linden, Perry warns that Glasgowman’s allies from other realms will return for revenge. The judge finds Mia not responsible, releases her to her mothers and recommends weekly psychiatric care for both sisters. Perry is adjudicated a juvenile delinquent on first-degree assault and committed to Creedmoor Psychiatric Center. Leaving the courthouse, Carisi sees Perry and Mia hook their pinkies together behind their backs.
Why it stands out
- Ice-T is credited but does not appear; Fin is absent from the case.
- Oona Laurence, Chloe Csengery and Mina Sundwall play the three girls, Zoe, Perry and Mia.
- Set on the night after Halloween; the episode aired on November 5, 2014, the week after the holiday.